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Friday, January 2, 2009

Heeeeeeeeeeere's Johnny!

I've been looking forward to trying the re-opened Euclid Tavern since I learned that it was back in existence about two months ago. Now, I realize that I shouldn't expect it to be exactly the same as it was before. After all, it had new owners.

So, it was with great trepidation that myself and my friends Mike and Chris cautiously approached the front door. All seemed well when we saw this colorful display:

Alas, that is the only photo you will see from the Euclid Tavern for two very important reasons. First, the bar itself was very dimly lit. As my phone has no flash, any photos I took would've not come out at all. Secondly, and more importantly, sadly, the food we had was just not good. We had fully intended to spend the entire evening there, starting out with some wings, graduating to some sandwiches, and finishing it off with a pitcher or two of beer.

The menu actually looked promising. Many of the items purported to be homemade. There were eight different sauces you could pick from on the chicken wing menu alone. Since you can order wings by 6 or 12, we decided to start out with 4 different flavors of wings: sesame oriental, sweet chili, spicy bacon, and Japanese sriracha. Yes, you read that right, Japanese sriracha. Um, isn't sriracha typically associated with Vietnamese cuisine?

The wings themselves (as far as a chicken wing goes) were meaty and cooked well and had a nice crispy exterior. Unfortunately, that was where their goodness ended. Both the sesame oriental and sweet chili sauces were grossly undersalted, although the sweet chili was slightly better. The spicy bacon wings were unanimously voted as the best, although the only reason I think it won was because the bacon actually properly seasoned the sauce. The Japanese sriracha just wasn't good. The primary flavor that came through was tomato paste. You really could've done a wonderful Vietnamese take on a chicken wing and incorporated sriracha into it. This concoction, was neither Japanese nor Vietnamese. It was simply not good. The other universal complaint was that three of the types of wings had that sticky glaze on the wing and was not really a sauce at all.

When our server came back, I asked her if the sauces were made in house or came out of a bottle. She indicated that some were homemade and some weren't. She did indicate that of the ones that weren't made in house, the chef would doctor them with little tweaks. Honestly, none of us felt that any of those could've been homemade.

When it came time to decide whether we wanted to order additional things from the menu, we unanimously decided to go somewhere else for dinner.

Which landed us at Q Doba. Where I had this:

Soft tacos with grilled chicken, tomato, lettuce, and corn salsa. It was *okay*. All three of us were pretty darn disappointed with the Euclid Tavern: NOT because the wings didn't taste like they did 15 years ago, but because the wings they served just weren't good.

All three of us agreed that a haiku detailing our experience tonight is in order.